NND

National Napping Day is a thing. A pretty nice thing. See you next week!

Mind Dump 8-bit

Back from the dead!

While learning about the PS4 was great and everything the real lesson of that press conference was that the police aren’t there to protect us.

I’m constantly thinking about games and watching the Oscars last night got me thinking about art too. While increasingly cinematic games like Assassin’s Creed, Deus Ex, and even Warcraft seem like easy targets for film adaptations, my definition of an art game is still a game where the narrative of the interactivity is what matters.

Examples include: Frog Fractions, Curiosity, the Kanye West Twitter game, the upcoming Team Meat joint Mew-Genics and, of course, No-Apps The Game.

What if they made a summer camp where the kids could learn about game writing? That’d be weird.

Fire Emblem Awakening is pretty great.

Halloween Tease

I’ve Got Nothing

I spent a good long time trying to come up with a topic for this week but sorry, I’ve got nothing.

Woop Woop!

Every region has awful people. However, what makes awful people awful is sometimes inherent to the region they come from. Just like the “Jersey Shore” gang can only come from my home state, the meth-addled, wrestling-loving, magnet-studying clown family that is the Juggalos can only come from the Midwest where the Faygo flows like water.


For the past like dozen years, this group of freethinking fans of the Insane Clown Posse and their Psychopathic Records label has been putting together this music/freshness festival called “The Gathering of the Juggalos” where they can escape the mainstream and play the neden game to their heart’s content. While I’ve been aware of these ninjas for some time now, when they put out the truly spectacular infomercial for last’s year gathering, they skyrocketed up my “ironic appreciation” list right alongside James Franco and “Monster High.” The latest infomercial has now arrived so I’ve decided to share my thoughts in list form for you guys to peep.

NYC Humblebrags

Quick update, now that Pie Planet is done the new schedule is recaps on Fridays and originals on Tuesdays, like this one.

Based on my interests and career aspirations, it’s pretty inevitable that I’ll end up living on the west coast. However, I’ll still always be an east coast native and therefore will always have love for New York City. After visiting the city this past weekend to meet up with some friends, I remembered that every time I go there, it’s awesome for an entirely different reason. So I decided to write them down.

Liar's Day

Out of the numerous ways the internet and its stupid culture have improved the world, the increased relevance they have given to April Fool's Day is one of the more overlooked ones. Sure, when you are a kid straight up lying to your friends and family is fun on one level. However, now we get to see huge corporations like Google spending lots of actual time and money making videos purely for the sake of trolling. It's a glorious, new digital age we live in.

Don't have time/don't want to come up with any new jokes so here's this thing I did a few years ago.

Effort!

On Holidays

What with finals and plane trips happening, coming up with an original post for this week has proved to be somewhat of a challenge. Then I went to a Christmas party in the middle of November and it all clicked.

Christmas celebrations start way too early these days.

Mind Dump 7- Incorrect Opinions

I believe very strongly that certain things that are technically subjective opinions can be objectively wrong. This can range from views on some games to certain aspects of other cultures. However, the key to having this opinion while not becoming a hypocrite is recognizing one's own incorrect opinions like eating cereal without milk or the posts below.

Mind Dump 6- The White Shark Trilogy

I said in the very first mind dump that I think the idea of a “greatest white shark” has potential to be a movie. After all, if something like Shark Night 3D can exist, why not bring some more high concept elements to the “shark attack” subgenre of horror movies. Without Deep Blue Sea, no one would’ve known that sharks that can swim backwards are super smart and/or able to kill Sam Jackson.

So after thinking about this for way longer than necessary, I’ve imagined out not one, but a trilogy of movies(?) based around this concept that I would like to share with you now.

Mind Dump 5- The Devil and Nic Cage, plus more shout-outs

This is a momentous mind dump because not only is it the first to be formed as a single story Linguistic Gimmicks style, but it is also the first to be presented in a revolutionary new format called video.

But first I wanted to remind you, as I will periodically do, that if you support this kind of nonsense from me then you can follow or subscribe through the box on the top right of this page




MORE AFTER THE BREAK

Mind Dump 4- Whoever wins...

Yeah one of these again

Okay, I’ve been teaching myself how to use Abode Flash for like five years now, back when it was Macromedia Flash. It’s an awesome program but it’s also incredibly dense and confusing. Even after all these years I still feel like I’m barely tapping its potential.

It’s also incredibly useful to journalists for making cool interactive stories which is why our lecture today was dedicated to the program. I can’t blame them for going incredibly slow for the sake of those just learning the program. However, while everyone else was learning the most basic, simple functions, I did this…

Mind Dump 3- True Stories Bro

While fictional media like movies and comics have their plethora of dumb, dumb stories, often times I find myself pleased by the knowledge that sometimes the dumbest stories are the most true.

The Oprah Winfrey Network and a mini-Mind Dump

The new issue of Blackboard is out, Northwestern University's African-American student magazine, and if you go to Northwestern University, America's greatest university according to Gawker, like I do you should pick up a copy. And if you want a taste, here's my article about the strengths and weaknesses of the new Oprah Winfrey Network or OWN.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Plus clicking on links now opens a new tab instead of directing you away from the page. Thank Time for that.

Mind Dump 2- Video Games

Bitmob is an awesome website that allows users to write video game articles and have the opportunity to have their work promoted by some pretty important people in game journalism. I've already used their services and you should too if you have any interest in writing about games.

They also have a podcast with topics chosen by the community. For their 100th episode though, they had users call in. Around 14:30 you can hear about my ridiculous Donkey Kong dream.

LISTEN HERE!

That got me to thinking about the other strange ideas for video games I've had and then I thought, "that sounds like another mind dump post."

Mind Dump

There's another sort of review in the works but in the meantime here's an additional recurring feature I'd like to start. Sometimes when I have an idea for a movie or a song or just a phrase in general comes to me I'll just write it down. Me and some of other dudes are creating an entire fictional album with this method and one day I might share here. It involves apples. But right now here's a selection from my iPod note labeled "movies ideas."